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VILKOMIR. 134 VILLAGRAN. Kovno, Western Russia, 43 miles northeast of Kovno (Map: Russia, B 3). Its fourteenth-cen- tury church is one of the tirst Roman Catholic churches founded in Lithuania. The chief manu- factures are leather, brick, and pottery. Popu- lation, in 1897, 13,509, of whom the Jews consti- tute over one-half. The town was founded in the tenth century. VILLA (Lat., country-house, farm). Prop- erly a somewhat extensive country estate, occu- pied for purposes of rest and pleasure for a part of the year. The term is used to indicate the house and groimds together. It is not used of farms, nor of rural or suburban estates occupied the whole year round. Its meaning is fitly ren- dered by the French equivalent maison de plai- sance. The villa originated with the ancient Ro- mans, and received its highest development in Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Tlic villas of the Romans were extensive estates; the buildings for residence covered a large area and provided apartments for eating, sleeping, recreation, study, exercise, and bathing; the whole were set in and combined with grounds laid out with the highest art. Pliny had five villas; Cicero at least as many; and that of Hadrian at Tivoli covered nearly a square mile of territory. The Italian villas of the Renaissance were due in large measure to the splendor of the Papal Court. They were intended as places for brief sojourn and recreation rather than for a season's residence like those of antiquity. They are therefore gen- erally smaller, and the buildings far less impor- tant than those of the ancients. The grounds re- produce in little, and with consummate skill, all the most characteristic features of the antique gardens. Some, like that at Castel Gandolfo, are built on the ruins of ancient villa-terraces. The villas Pamfili, Borghese, Albani, Jledici, Sladama, and Papa Giulio, at Rome, those at Frascati, the Villa d"Este at Tivoli, and the Villa Lante at Bagnaia. near Viterbo, are among the best known. They represent a type of formal land- scape gardening and architecture which has nowhere else been brought to the same per- fection. The villas of more modern date in Europe and America borrow from the Italian villas many suggestions as to landscape architec- ture and detail, but, being intended for a sea- son's residence, ' the dwelling presents more of the character of ])ermanence, and of a regular habitation, than the casino of the Italian villas, and is accompanied by dependencies such as stables, gardeners' lodges, tennis courts, and kitchen gardens, which are foreign to the pur- poses of the Italian villa. See Ca.sino. Consult: Pereier and Fontaine, Maisona tie plaisance dn Rome; Letarouillv, Edifvfs dr Home modrritr (Paris, 18G0) ; Reynolds, "Italian Villas," in ArchUeclural Itrcord (1890?) ; Pliny, Letters. VILLA ALBANI, al-bii'm'-. See Albani, Villa. VILLA ALDOBRANDINI, jil'd.', brandO'n.V A hanilsome villa with extensive grounds, at Frascati, !.'> miles from Rome. It was built by Giacomo della Porta, fur Cardinal Pietro Aldo- brandini, whose uncle was Clement VIII., and was completed toward the end of (he sixteenth century. It contains a fine collection of the works of Cavalicrc d'Arpino. The grounds are beautified with picturesque artificial waterfalls and ancient oak forests. VILLA BORGHESE, b8r-gji'za. See Bor- ghese, Villa. VILLACH, fenilK. A to^vn in Carinthia, Austria, 22 miles west of Klagenfurt, situated, at an altitude of 166.5 feet, on the right bank of the Drave and on a line of the Austrian State Railway (Map: Austria, C 3). The manufac- tures include colors and other chemical products, cement, wood products, and articles of lead and other metals. There are a Gothic church (fif- teenth century), gymnasium, and theatre. Just to the southwest are the Villacher Alps (Do- bratsch, 7110 feet). In the neighborhood, at Annentreim. there are much frequented warm sulphur springs and a bath establishment. Popu- lation, in 1900, 9360. From 1007 to 1759 Villach was under the rule of the bishops of Bamberg. It was the commercial centre of Carinthia and had especial prominence in the trade between Germany and Venice. Here in 1492 the Germans under Khevenhiiller defeated the Turks under Ali Pasha. In 1759 Villach went by purchase to Austria. A conflict took place here in 1813 between Frimont and the Viceroy of Italy. VILLAFRANCA DI VERONA, vil'la- fran'ka de vft-ro'na. A town in the Province of Verona. Italy, on the Tione, 14 miles by rail north of Mantua (Map: Italy, E 2). The preliminary treaty of peace between France and Austria, which ended the war of 1859, was signed here .Julv II, 1859. Population (commune), in 1901, 9461. VILLAGE COMMUNITY (OF., Fr. viUnge, from Lat. rinaticus, relating to a country house or farm, from villa, country house, farm; con- nected with Gk. oUoi, oikos, Skt. ris, house, people, Goth, treihs, OHG. jcf/i, AS. loic, Eng. toick. village, town ) . The name given to the organized agricultural community of primitive times. About the middle of the nineteenth cen- tury historians held that the political unit among the early Germans, if we except the fam- ily, was a form of village community know'n as the mark (q.v.). It was also believed that the organization of early Anglo-Saxon society was similar to that existing in Germany. These views were promulgated by men like Waitz, Von Maurer, Nasse, and Kemble; and Maine sought analogies in the village communities of modern India to support this theory. All these views Were attacked liy Ftistcl de Coulanges and See- bolim, who held tluit the village communities of Germany and England were not free commimistic organizations, as the mark theory wouhl have them, but that the villages were inhabited by serfs. In recent years nuuiy writers, especially Mnitland and VinogradotT, have put forth a modified form of the old view. A primitive form of village community, which is known as the mir (q.v.), still exists in Russia. For a com- plete bibliography, see Serf. VILLAGRAN, viM'yA-griln' (or Villagra), FnA(isio i)H (1507-03). A Spanish colonial admiuistriitor, born at Asforga, Leon. He served cons|)icuously with Valdivia in Pern during the conquest of Cliile (1510-45), and succeeded him as Governor when Vahlivia was killed in the Araucaniaa revolt (1553-54). In 1557 he waf